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" When I was in high school, the energy in hip-hop at that point was the park energy... I was just trying to develop my style at that point, and I think, when you're trying to find your style, you find yourself. "

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" My approach to writing rhymes went hand in hand with the music. I'd try to make different rhythms with my rhymes on the track by tripping up patterns, using multi-syllable words, different syncopations. I'd try to be like a different instrument. "

Rakim

Patterns

Words

" I always say a rapper is like a halfback in the NFL. You got about seven years, then it's a wrap. "

" My thing is, you have to let young artists be young artists. "

" The young kids out there doing their thing, I can't knock them. "

" People think the older you get, the wacker you get. I think the older I get, the better I get. "

" Hip-hop has taken a lot of different routes throughout the years, man. I've been around since 1986. "

" I had a lot of respect for Prodigy. He brought the hood to the booth. When we were trying to shape this rap thing into something, he was one of the cats I respected for bringing the hood into the booth. "

" Back in the day, rappers were 'bump bump bump ba bump ba bump.' They was rhyming like that, but I was like, 'bababa bump bump babum ba babump bababa bump.' "

" Subconsciously, Islam took over me, so it was like eighty or ninety percent of the fabric of the person I was. "

Rakim

Person

" Eminem is a master. "

Rakim

Eminem

Master

" When you listen to old-school music, you can smell your mother's food in the kitchen. You can feel where you was when you first heard that song. That's what's beautiful about music. It's for everyone, but we all have individual memories that make us love it. "

" I'm a fan of Jay-Z, from the negotiating table to the booth. "

" I love, you know, a lot of jazz, John Coltrane. "

" I just appreciate the love that I get and support from hip-hop. "

" When me and Eric did songs back in the day, we didn't go and sit down in front of no A&R. We made our album, and then, when we finished, we handed it in, and then we picked the best song for the first single. "

" Playing the sax and then enjoying jazz music, man - it's like I learned how to find words inside of the beat. "

" I can't look at TV without seeing something that's been influenced by rap. Even commercials for cereal. When I was small, I was a fan of cartoon characters - now the cartoon characters are rapping! "

" My mother sang jazz and opera - she even performed at the Apollo on Amateur Night. "

" Age don't count in the booth. "

" Without no disrespect to any artist, there's a lot of degrading music out there as far as degrading the culture and degrading society as well. That's individuals that choose to make that kind of music. "

" You come up, you love music, and then business interferes. "

" I love what I live, and I live Islam, so I applied it to everything I do. I applied it to my rhymes, and I felt that I wanted the people to know what I knew. "

" I started studying in '85 and got knowledge of self and started spitting. What was going on was taking the understanding of what I was reading and applying it with my life and applying it with my rhymes. "

" The golden age was when people were starting to understand what hip-hop was and how to use it. I was lucky to come up then. Everybody wanted to be original and have substance; it was somewhat conscious... There was an integrity that people respected. "